


Suave Sesquipedalian Bastard

by blcwriter



Series: Suave Sesquipedalian Bastard [1]
Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M, wordy as all hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-30
Updated: 2009-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 11:50:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  Chris is trapped in an inferno of words, and Zach Quinto is the devil stoking the fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suave Sesquipedalian Bastard

_  
***Facepalm* RPF Fic, Chris/Zach, Suave Sesquipedalian Bastard, NC-17-- 1/3**   
_   


  


Title: Suave Sesquipedalian Bastard  
Author: blcwriter  
Words:  Wordy, wordy, wordy  
Pairing:  Pine/Quinto  
Warnings:  NC-17 for more pollysyllabic smut than your fangrrl panties can stand.  I hope.  Also, unrepentant word! and lit!porn, because Chris is a wordslut and so, too, am I. 

  


Summary:  Chris is trapped in an inferno of words, and Zach Quinto is the devil stoking the fire.

*Facepalm.*  I can't believe I wrote real person fic.  Clearly, this the product of too much bourbon, the YouTube vids of Chris & Zach having vocabulary wars, and the rpf goddess [](http://smutjunkie.livejournal.com/profile)[**smutjunkie**](http://smutjunkie.livejournal.com/).  It's all her fault.

  


  
  


\---

"I'm soliciting your acquiescence in this, Christopher," comes Zach's voice from behind, his hot, mirthful breath ghosting Chris' ear, twining, disembodied, laughing its way into Chris' brain.  His friend-- this man-- that voice-- my God, that incredible _diction_ and _rhetoric_ \-- apparently is interested in expanding the definition of "friend," and oh, is Chris interested in participating in that physico-linguistic redefinition. 

Chris is a word slut, unrepentant-- English major first, drama queen (king, queen, _whatever_ , did that phrase really require further refinement, people knew what it meant) second, words first, last, and always.  As long as he can read plays and books and dictionaries and takeout menus, anything printed, he is really that slutty-- as long as he can read them alone and aloud in his bedroom, the ability to say words on stage or on screen is irrelevant.  The icing and the cake, yes, and _man_ , he loves cake, but books and their words are the stuff of life so far as Chris is concerned, and he will always read on.  Hamlet had it all wrong with his complaint about " _words, words, words_ " and their ultimate meaninglessness.  Body language-- touch, posture, long gazes, facial expressions-- any _animal_ could have those.  What they had, too, was a failure to communicate fully, something man was at least capable of, tongue-tied and/or leaden-penned as individuals might be.  Chris likes to think he can find the right words to suit most any occasion.  This occasion, however ...

"Yes," Chris breathes out, agreement provided, and Zach, standing behind him, wastes no time in pulling Chris' shirt from his pants, those long elegant hands of his making their way, warm, deft, and so-very-wanted in two different directions.  One over his heart-- the palmate splay firm, pressing him back into Zach's chest--the other snakes-- serpentine-- slithers-- embodies temptation and Zach is the snake and the fruit of the forbidden tree, the essence of knowledge and the oh-so-beyond-mere-matters-of-gender Eve.  Chris will give into temptation, no question.  That hand winds its way below Chris' belt, his brass-buttoned fly yielding with soft pops to the underneath pressure-- that hand, too, presses him back even as it begins curling and stroking Chris' erection in ways no Orion slave girl from TOS canon could ever match, and he's pressed back until Zach's _holyshitohmyfuckinggodyes_ own erection is hard against the cleft of Chris' ass, unassailable evidence of Zach's real desire.

"Does that please you, Chris?" Zach's voice, bodiless and yet borne of that solid lean heat at his back works its magic again.  "Do you enjoy my hands on you, exploring your well-defined muscles?  Holding and stroking your cock, which is very impressive?  Or should I say _phallus_ , Christopher?"  Zach taunts as his hand tightens on Chris' hard-as-a-rock cock.  Before Chris can speak, Zach's voice continues.  "Because it's not obvious at _all_ , Christopher, _really_ , the way you suppress a shiver when I utter something polysyllabic, much less the way your dick jumps in your pants when I call you by your full name rather than the more banal ' _Chris_.'"

He could care less if Zach is taunting him more than a little, right now-- that voice and those hands and those _words_ are caressing him, an unholy combination of inchoate and physical, all fraught with meaning and capable of confirming or contradicting the meaning of each to the other.  Word games-- Zach is the master.  Zach's hands still stroke him-- proof he still desires Chris' acquiescence in this despite teasing statements.  Groaning, Chris grinds backward into Zach's body, and his costar-friend-colleague-always-has-been-and-shall-be-oh-for-fuck's-sake-I-hope-not-to-be-just-his-friend-- groans in response.

Chris' "...the hell!" is in response to the alarm, not some miraculous twist of Zach's fingers on and in needy muscle and flesh, giving Chris what he'd never given into the need for before.  Chris is no fool, and no matter how sexually adventurous he might be in his head, or how seemingly liberal Hollywood is, taking the risk of being defined gay would be the end of versatile roles anywhere in that town, and Chris hates New York.  Playing gay on the screen was one thing; experimenting with men in real life is another.  It's not worth finding out how deep the yearning goes, not when he can date vapid women who don't want under his skin because they're only skin deep themselves, and sex is just sex, a release, like a workout at the gym, most of the time in the end.  Being in love isn't something Chris wants to try.  Except maybe with Zach-- which is why, especially, he will keep his mouth shut. 

  
"Fuck," he says, ineloquently.  (He thinks this is a word, and as he's alone in his bed, no one will dare contradict him.)  Press junkets _suck_ big waxy whale dick-- all day listening to Zach talk, all night sleeping alone in his bed and dreaming of Zach and his words, words, words.  They mean too much-- or Chris reads into them too much, that's the problem.

"I'm not even gay!" he growls at the room, lying to the walls, the ceiling, the bed, himself, last but not least.  He's an actor, he gets paid to tell lies.  Not that it makes any difference.  The empty words-- _words, words, words_ , _okay, maybe Old Bill was partially right_ \-- echo against the ornate tiled ceiling.  _If it's gilded and tiled, this must be St. Petersburg_ , Chris thinks to himself-- but no answer returns.  He doesn't expect any-- after all, without an interlocutee, an interlocutor is indulging in meaninglessness to address questions to the air.  He also detects in his train of thought an abuse of the hyphenate phrase, and squashes the thought that it's a _style_ and thus grammatically valid.

 _Might as well build a castle or five in the air, too, while I'm at it, including one where my publicist isn't more annoyed by this freaky bromance shit than she already is, and hell, sends me flowers after I figure out how to ask Zach on a date,_ Chris thinks to himself, then staggers off to a hot shower to deal with the problem his word and Zach-lusting subconscious has raised in his lap.

"Suave sesquipedalian _bastard_ ," he hisses under his breath as he jerks himself off.  This is the sixteenth time this press tour Chris has woken up like this.  He fucking _hates_ doing press.  Why on Earth did he want to be Kirk again?

\--

Yep.  Chris hates press junkets, he reflects, as another blonde bimbette who can barely say "Hi" asks the same question of Zach that a million telegenic bimbettes already have--Spock's dual nature.  _Blah, blah, blah_.  He hates these junkets-- it's the best word-- hate.  Loathe.  Detest.  Abhor.  Despise.  Spurn.  Execrate.  Abominate.  Dislike is too mild, hate is really the best.  Malign is good, too, though, Chris reflects, until Zach's use of the word "methodology" catches his attention in the phrase "adjusting his methodology, his theory of how to command, given the paradigm shift Kirk's approach represents."  _Hello, methodology, paradigm shift, totally hot words,_ Chris' brain says.  _Danger, Christopher Whitelaw Pine, danger, suave sesquipedalian bastard alert at three o'clock._

He doesn't look at said bastard-- the only thing hotter than hearing Zach enunciate so precisely is watching him do so, and it's too early in the morning and Chris too fresh from his frustrating dream for him to be able to watch those eloquent lips shape their way around syllables most mortals didn't know, much less can utter correctly.

 _Doomed.  Fucking doomed.  I'm babbling to myself polysyllabically in my head._   It's like reading Jane Austen-- his increasingly complex syntax and word choices are the result of exposure to Zach, and every damned day they sit in uncomfortable chairs, pretending like most questions aren't inane (really, the last decent interview was that Blunty guy in New Zealand) or hasn't been asked then thousand times, trying to come up with words to beat Zach's.  Of course, the competition would be less pathetic if it wasn't all in Chris' head-- Zach just talked like this naturally.  Chris is the one reading the dictionary, looking for good words to drop into interviews.

 _Sacrosanct, moribund, etcetera,_ his brain mumbles as he half listens to the interviewer, who's unleashing her vapidity again upon Chris.  Really-- it isn't like he talks like a caveman when Zach isn't around-- he's confused the crap out of Lohan (but really, who didn't, poor kid) and damn, he'd had fun with Anne, trading novels and the Sunday Times Book Review, but Quinto-- _man_ , his A game is now forced into the A ++ game and he still feels like he'll never catch up.  _Welcome to the reality of Zachary Quinto.  You cannot compete.  Simply worship at his pedestal and forget doing anything else with the rest of your life._

"We see Kirk change a lot over the course of the movie," blondie says.  "Tell us some more about that."

Chris avoids rolling his eyes and decides that if Zach's going to bust out _paradigm shift_ , Chris can damned well do him one better.  "Well, clearly there are external influences working on Kirk-- his friendship with Bones, the sheer passage of time, his exposure to the rigors and duties of Starfleet, the stark and eventual complementary contrast that Spock's conduct embodies-- and those all intersect with his transition from self-consciousness to command, but I see his journey as more existential at heart.  The death of his father, the feeling and fear of never measuring up, of always falling under that shadow, the implication that he's been left essentially alone by his brother and mother and that something serious happened with his stepfather-- all those things generate this sense of angst and never belonging, never being able to do anything right-- that's what drives him.  It's what Pike recognizes in the bar-- that Kirk's dynamism is misdirected and that no one has allowed Kirk to try to be someone besides his father's son.  Pike's dare to Kirk to become his own man serves as the impetus for Kirk's encountering those other, external influences that are also at work as he transforms into the driven, serious man he is by the end of the movie."  
 _  
Dynamism, impetus, existential_ , he thinks with self-satisfaction, even if his answer is pretty bullshit.  _Top that, Quinto_.  He sneaks a look at Zachary then, intending to share an eyeroll as the blonde stops to chat with her producer.  Zach ruins it, though.  " _Misdirected dynamism_ ," he says suavely, quirking an eyebrow at Chris, a smart-ass smile on his face.  "I _like_ it, Christopher.  _Dynamism_.  I'm going to use that."   
Chris can't decide if Zach's mocking or not until the next interview, when he actually uses the phrase to describe how "'Spock misunderstands Kirk's motivations in gaming the Kobiyashi Maru-- he assumes that Kirk's dynamism is still misplaced, as Chris said so eloquently earlier on," with a quick, sweet smile to his costar. "Spock thinks that Kirk is still self-aggrandizing, and doesn't comprehend that Kirk's actions with the simulation are actually a prophetic microcosm of what will happen later on in the film in the meta or macro sense-- that Kirk can and will successfully rewrite the rules of engagement until he comes out victorious."  There's a whole bunch of blather on after that, and apparently Chris manages intelligible responses, but really, his brain's stuck in a temporal loop (and damn Anton for making them all watch TNG too, because when he'd not dreaming about Zach he's having nightmares about Data, Picard and the holodeck computer taking over the ship _yet again_ while Chris is blinded by JJ's fucking lensflares all over the place and can't see his way to rewiring the control panels) where Zach quotes Chris, for fuck's sake, calls him eloquent, and then says _self-aggrandizing_ AND used the term _prophetic microcosm_.  _Meta and macro were just there to give Chris' balls that last edge of blueness, enough to make an Andorian jealous._

He looks at his watch and sees there's an hour to go until lunch, ruing the way time doesn't fly when his cock is doing an entirely distracting happy dance in his pants because his costar-cum-jerkoff fantasy-- yes, pun intended, he tells himself-- just _quoted_ him in an interview.  And then Zach uses the word "moribund" again in combination with the phrase "sci-fi tropes,"  _tropes_ , for fuck's sake, and Chris nearly launches himself over the arm of his highly uncomfortable director's chair to grab the sides of Zach's face and taste those syllables on those lips for himself.

He's in hell.  Hades, damnation, purgatory, whatever and however you call it when you don't get what you want-- Chris is trapped in an inferno of words, and Zachary Quinto's the devil stoking the fire.  He's also annoyed that he just made an analogy using Star Fucking Trek as the reference point.  Balls bluer than an Andorian?  _What the fuck?_   Not only is he in love with his costar, something Christopher Pine _does not let happen_ , especially not with a man, he's becoming a Trekkie.

 _Fuck._

It's one thing for Simon and Karl to be all Trekkie and shit-- Simon is a writer and hysterically funny and married and has a kid on the way, and Karl is the coolest, handsomest dork on the planet, and has a kid, so they're _allowed_ to settle all arguments Trek and drop TOS bits into conversation and argue whether something is canon or not-- especially since unlike the rest of the cast, the two of them have movie prop skills that might work in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse-- they both could shoot guns and if guns didn't work, Simon could lead the cricket-bat infantry while Karl led the calvary with his longsword and the BFG, just for good measure.  It was another thing altogether for Chris to be getting all nerdtastic too.  Next thing he knew, he'd be dreaming that Zach could just read his mind like he was Sylar after picking up some new _Heroes_ power-y shit and could cut right through Chris' self-rationalizing that he wasn't gay but might make an exception if Zach would just read him the dictionary-- yeah, he could cut through Chris' girly-girl angst like Worf and his _bat'leth_ during TNG's "Parallels."

 _Fuck._ Chris just conjured a simile using goddamnedfucking _Klingon weaponry_ and a _TNG episode reference_ \-- he is so utterly screwed.  There's only one thing for it, Chris reflects as he waits for his next question.  Tonight it's going to be Chris, the contents of his mini-bar, and Jane Austen's _Persuasion._ He totally needs Captain Wentworth's manly yet emotive declaration of love to Anne about now if he's going to combat the feeling that he's turning into a twelve year old girl.  _"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible.  A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."_ Man, Jane knew how to write.  And yet Captain Wentworth was still a stud at the end.  There's still hope for Chris.  Right?

\--

They've gotten into this habit, the cast who are out on any given arm of the Junket Unending, as Chris is starting to call it.  They have dinner together, all of them-- they get someone at the hotel to recommend someplace dive-ish-- and goddamn Zach and his Sasan and his " _-ish_ " to the wordy hell Chris is living in-- that serves whatever passes for local comfort food wherever they are, then sit there together for hours, eating and smoking and drinking as they snark on the worst questions they've been asked during the day and otherwise bond as only actors punch-drunk from too many interviews can be.  Right now, they're making up answers that would give all their publicists heart attacks.  Talk about incest, these beer and carbo-fueled bitchfests, but they're all family by choice now, and if you can't be exhausted and bitchy with people who've seen you in bruiseporn makeup, then who can you bitch with until all the carbs wrench you out of your vapid-question-induced catatonia?  At least, that's what Chris thinks, and so far, no one else has begged off of these all-night-long dinners and occasional post-dinner clubbing adventures except when there's a call home to family in the offing.  It's the verbal equivalent of a hug, these clustering talks around tables in too many cities to count, except today, though, Chris squirms and needs away from this group that's an incestuous home that sometimes means more to him than his own fucking family.

Zach's retelling their word wars for the day (it's a meta-joke for the whole cast by now, the way Zach and Chris ham up the vocab in these interviews) and explaining the context of Chris' " _dynamism_ " remark, which Zach is actually still praising when Karl laughs, the sound warm and rich like the man.  Sure, he makes crappy movies a lot of the time, but he's always so _good_ despite the crap all around him that he can write his own paycheck most of the time and if you look up Good Guy anywhere, Karl's picture is there.  Chris pats that totally platonic mancrush of his on the head and thanks it for not taking over his brain as he enjoys listening to Karl.

"Eggheads.  So glad I'm in a thinking man's action movie for once," he says with a grin, quaffing his beer and dragging his Marlboro as he directs that deadly Kiwi accent at Zach.  "I mean, Vin and Dwayne are smart guys, really, but I haven't drowned in this much bs erudition since _Rings_."  He takes a thoughtful drag on his cigarette before saying "God, I miss Viggo." 

The conversation wends its way naturally to what a bizarro renaissance _stud_ Viggo Mortensen is, and everyone at the table eventually agrees that _Eastern Promises_ is actor porn because it's got Naomi Watts and Ed Harris _and_ Viggo, for fuck's sake, and from there it's a hop, skip and a jump to Zach opining (in a way that is both drunk and yet dignified, because Zach's always dignified, even when he's redefining "cheap date," as he so often does during these bitchfests) after his fourth vodka tonic that "Viggo would totally make an awesome admiral in the next movie, and they could make him and Pike kiss onscreen and have it not be a _Plato's Stepchildren_ copout," and _thank fuck,_ everyone at the table nods wisely at that bit of nerdery and Chris exhales in relief.  If Zach just got all Trek-core at the table, then it's _fine_ that Chris is thinking about Klingon weaponry.  Right?

Karl nods like Zach's serious-- and who knows, maybe he is-- and says "I wonder if I could twist Henry's arm on that,"-- because of course Karl's on a first-name basis with Viggo _and_ his " _Dad, you have to make Rings_ " son-- and then goes off on how normalizing homosexuality onscreen is the next frontier in blockbuster movies and Chris suppresses a sigh as Zach-- who's not technically _out_ but everyone on set _knows_ and Zach doesn't really bother to hide it once he's sure there're no phobes around to make trouble and yet, Zach seems to be avoiding gay ghetto roles, though no wonder, since he can act the fuck out of anything and doesn't just have his looks and a sense of _want_ to get him by, unlike Chris-- looks at Karl like he's his hero.  Chris kind of wants to be Karl Urban when he grows up, and not just because the man is a badass and knows Viggo Mortensen, although those are reasons enough.  No-- Chris wants Zach to look at him like that, too.  Of course, that would mean growing balls, something Chris seems to be lacking right now and doesn't contemplate getting any time in the future.  Instead, he nods agreement and goes back to sipping his dark-as-stout beer as he pokes at the buckwheat _piroshkis_ on his plate.  If it's buckwheat for carbs and tiled gilded ceilings it must still be St. Petersburg, right?  Didn't he have that thought already today? 

It's the travel, he tells himself then, that's turning this mancrush into stalker-like passion.  The dislocation that comes of Tokyo yesterday and Prague tomorrow and yet no jam today, ever-- that dislocation makes Zach's wordiness both an anchor and a tsunami, a way to hold on and feel utterly lost all at once until Chris inhales prose in his head so purple it's like fucking Barney the Dinosaur dictated the decorative scheme.  When Chris gets back to LA and his little bungalow full of paper and books and the detritus of writing and booksluts all over the 'verse-- and Chris is utterly screwed whenever Zach or anyone else finally learns he buys black hardbacked art journals for keeping his thoughts in because Moleskines might have been cool at one point but now they're for posers and _anyway_ , Chris always liked the heavier paper of the art books and the wide open space of unlined white paper, leaving air for his thoughts to sprawl out on the page-- he thinks that he'll fell more grounded, more like himself, more capable of having thoughts that don't devolve into hyphenated or parenthetical tangents at the least provocation.  (Not that Zachary Quinto is a _least_ provocation-- a least anything, really.  It's too bad the English language doesn't recognize _mostest_ as a valid superlative, since Chris isn't yet ready to go so far as to call Zach _everything, ever._ ) _It's bad when you think in parentheses in your own fucking head,_ Chris reminds himself, and takes another sip of his beer.

Except, well, fuck, _thinking makes it so_ , right?  Fucking Hamlet, fucking Bill Shakespeare and his goddamned fucking _words, words, words_.  Goddamned Quinto, because the man is using " _misguided dynamism_ " like salt on the french fries of the cast's round-robin conversation tonight, and while it's not mocking, Chris feels _achytenderemorose_ about the fact that it's only his words in Zach's mouth right now.

He groans inwardly-- Chirs Pine, pretty skin over a deep puddle of fucked up beyond all recognition-- at the _sexualangstyfuckI'magirl_ compound thought and slides out of the booth before Zach can come back from his jaunt to the bathroom and trap him inside again.  He bids everybody goodnight, giving Zach a Kirk-style fingers-to-forehead mini-salute and a "see you tomorrow" as he meets him on the way out to the street.  His arm's up and he's suddenly hailing a cab as if he's lived in New York all his life, but Zach grabs the door handle just as Chris is pulling it closed.  He slides in on the bench seat fast, landing hard against Chris as he laughs with the force of too many vodka tonics and all that compelling personality threatening to drown everyone in his orbit.  Which is just Chris at the moment.  _Forget Nero and red matter and all that sci-fi shit-- the real phenomenon is the black hole that is Zachary Quinto._

"You seem disquieted this evening, Christopher," his dark star says with all drunken seriousness after listening to Chris tell the driver the name of their hotel in his horrible Russian.  "All that vapid interlocution finally catching up with you?"

Chris can't help but sigh ruefully-- Zach's got far more stamina about this kind of shit what with _Heroes_ , cheap-date liver and all  "Yeah.  Teeny-bopper flicks don't call for world tours like this.  I'm pretty sure JJ was nuts casting me.  This Unending Junket From Hell is going to kill me, and then the _Farragut_ producers are going to sue my estate for breaching my contract."

Zach laughs, leaning in, warm on Chris' side and smelling of Russian dive bar smoke and the musk of too many people sitting in too small a booth.  _Eau du Trek Cast,_ overladen with Zach and his cigarette smoke.  Smells like home, or something sappy like that.  "You underestimate yourself, Christopher.  Anyone who can survive filming with La Lohan has the constitution of a cockroach and can survive anything."

"Backhand me again, o complimentary one," Chris retorts, and Zach snickers and slides away to brace his back on the taxicab door and look at Chris with this _evil_ look in his eye that belies whatever the gossip rags say about Zach being a complete pussycat.  People keep using that word, and Chris doesn't think it means what people think it means-- and _great_ , now Mandy Patinkin is reciting lines in his head-- because Chris knows _all_ fluffy cute kitties have sharp claws and teeth.  Plus, any actor-- and Zach hasn't ever said this, thank God-- who says that they _don't_ pull the darkness for their villian!characters from somewhere inside them is full of _shit_ , and Sylar's too fucking complex to just be an archetype.  Nope-- something in Zach Quinto is at least a little bit twisted, not just mischievous, and this glint in Zach's eye right here in the cab is why Chris keeps dreaming that Zach knows and this war of words they keep having is both foreplay and one giant, sesquepedalian cockblock.

Instead of saying something even more evil, though, Zach just looks at Chris for a long moment while cars and bikes bumble on the dark street outside like drunken fireflies.  "No, really, you look really tired or something.  Are you sleeping?  Or is something the matter?"  The man actually reaches across the hard, slick leather bench seat of the diesel-clattering old-fashioned Mercedes, palming Chris' forehead with a look of concern. 

And this, _this_ is why among nine million other reasons Chris is completely in love with Zach Quinto-- the man goes from giving Chris shit for movies that at least pay the bills to feeling his forehead in a cab in three point two seconds.  He never knows what to expect with the man and for a guy whose love for words and for drama doesn't stop him from always reading the end of a book _first,_ the fact that Chris not only tolerates but _craves_ Zach's mercurial ways is oh-so-very telling.  He broke up with his last girlfriend because she kept dropping by without calling first, but he's let Zach bang down his hotel room door in cities he can't even remember with a feeling of joy and delight.  But it's a curtailed joy-- Chris always needs to know the endings of things and with Zach, there's no way to predict.  Yep.  Chris Pine is a Class A control freak and Zach is his zero to no control whatsoever temptation.  It wouldn't end well, Chris' career being over for being thought gay notwithstanding.  Zach would destroy him, and then he'd have nothing, even the little satisfaction he gets from being himself, alone in the sun with a new book whose ending he can know before he ever gets started.

"Tired," Chris manages around the negating thoughts in his head, glad it's dark in the cab and Zach can't see the small leap that his dick just made in his pants at Zach's simple touch.  "Thinking about how I've got to go back to LA week after next, all the shit I've got to get done while I'm there."

Zach nods, sagely, only slowly removing his hand and still staring at Chris like he's a puzzle that will yield to his gaze-- and Chris hopes the vodka's got Zach drunk enough to lose concentration because one of these days Chris is just going to _spill_ if Zach just stares him down long enough.  Fortunately, Zach seems to decide to let Chris be for now, and they reach the hotel before too much longer, Zach spilling out onto the sidewalk more loosely than mere yoga allows for.  Chris grabs his friend's elbow before Zach hits the cement oh-so-pretty face first, hauling him upright and slinging Zach's arm over his shoulder.

It's not hard, bearing Zach's physical weight, Chris reflects as they go up in the elevator and Zach sleepily lolls against Chris, then lets his friend get him draped on his bed, tugging his shoes off.  He gives Chris such a sweet smile in thanks that Chris could almost believe that he was the one in control, that the first time Chris freaks out about needing to schedule each minute of every single goddamned day Zach will not only forgive him but somehow make it all magically better, that the moon is made of green cheese, for fuck's sake.  But it's not true, any of it, and while Zach's physical form isn't too much to bear, the metaphysical weight of Zach's freewheeling soul would crush Chris with his gravity. 

Zach's a dark star, a pulsating variable supergiant and Chris is a mere dwarf in comparison, a white subclass DQ glint not even visible one light year away, bound to collapse in a pinpoint before much longer.  Kind of like Chris' career-- he _gets_ that he's one of a dozen Ryan Reynolds types in the business-- likeable blondes with great abs and white smiles.  He's just aiming to put enough in the bank between now and whatever flop ends his career that he can do community theater and own a small bookshop in Berkeley-- he needs another five years in the business to live on for the rest of his life.  The internal _protestliewhatthefuckdoesitmatterit'sZach_ that he's not even gay is irrelevant.  He's also got to stop being such a physics geek in search of Trek-appropriate metaphors.

"Night, Chris," Zach slurs, patting his arm and giving him another sleep-ridden smile.

"Night, Zach," Chris says, then turns out the light and makes his way out of the room.  He's not going to "accidentally" fall asleep next to Zach while staying to make sure he won't puke-- Zach isn't that drunk and Chris didn't sleep the last time he tried that tack anyway.  Nope, just stayed up all night, staring at the perfection of Zach and his chest rising and falling in sleep as soot lashes brushed cheeks and coal-diamond stubble grew even longer and sharper.

 _Coal-diamond stubble.  I am a twelve-year old girl,_ Chris reflects on the walk back to his room.

\--

The problems with starring in _Trek_ , Chris reflects, as the last chapter of _Persuasion_ fails to soothe his soul after all-- is that they're bigger problems than Chris thought they would be.  Sure, he'd, well ... he hadn't "smelled blockbuster," because that was something Bruckheimer did and thank _fuck_ Chris wasn't Bruckheimer, but he'd thought JJ's vision for rebooting Trek would come out far better than _Cloverfield_ , and he'd been prepared for a higher level of papstalking than with the tween heartthrob shit from "Luck" and "Princess Diaries."  But this-- well, it's bigger and fuck but it's scary in some ways.  Aside from the falling in love with Zach thing, that is.  No one cared for weeks upon end about what he bought at the store.

As Chris and his laptop enjoy the tiled ceilings of his hotel room, he thinks that no one warned him about _fanfiction_.  Or that-- apparently unlike other fandoms, and boy, that's a word he needs to bleach out of his brain-- not all of it would be written by twelve-year-old girls. 

 _Shit,_ he'd recalled thinking the first time he trolled the LJ communities, a mere two weeks after the premiere.  _These people can write._ Genfic and hetfic and slashfic, mission- and 'shipfic and lions and tigers and bears and _oh my my my my_ , he'd thought when he found it.  Real person fic. 

These people _know_ Trek, Chris thinks once again as his discarded _Persuasion_ lies on the floor.  Captain Wentworth has nothing on some of this shit.  They have _totally_ plausible interpretations of the characters they'd all played onscreen, even if they're more angsty than JJ's vision, so much so that he can hear his co-stars read the lines in his head-- even the slashfics, which is creepy, cool, and illustrative of the _dualcompetingcomplementaryintertwinedforever_ ideas that fiction is both a window into larger truths we can't face in real life and a mirror of our own desires and our need to lie to ourselves.  These fics go places Chris would never fantasize about in his head, and damn if some of them aren't incredibly good.

The real person fic, though, it kills him tonight.  Bad enough that the Spock/Kirk smutty slash fiction is going to make staying professional on set nigh on impossible-- thank you, Star Trek XI Kink Meme and Bingo-- but these rpf writers.  _Damn,_ but they're good-- he says it again, the thought's worth repeating-- and it scares the _shit_ out of Chris because either these Trek fans are all erudite horny psychics who bleed virtual ink, or he's so obviously in love with Zach in these interviews that there's no hope for Chris and he should hang up his acting career yesterday-- and hence, again, no jam today.  To make matters worse, he suspects it's the latter and that Zach also knows, such that these word games and the way he'll praise Chris and be all bromantic and shit-- and fuck the internet _hard_ with a rusty photon torpedo for that word, and _shit_ , there he goes again with the Trek references, not to mention the multi-hyphenate thoughts-- are all Zach's way of indulging how insecure Chris is.  Yes, he might have graduated from Berkeley with more than respectable grades, but Chris still grew up in LA and he will always have blonde-boy-who-fucks-hipster-models-cum-starlets douchebag instincts in his nature along with the need to control every damned bit of his day.  There's a _reason_ his biggest movies to date have been teen flicks-- Chris isn't that deep or capable of creative abandon, he just wishes he was.  _If wishes were horses, then Zach Quinto would save a starship, ride a Captain._

 __To top it all off, the word!kink rpf fics, the ones that pick up on his and Zach's verbal sparring-- they're totally validating in a fucked-up kind of way, a pat-on-the-back there-there-Chris kind of mindfuck, like these invisible women-- he can't call them fangirls, this shit's way too well-written for that-- well, they aren't just indulging themselves writing porn.  To Chris, and here's the mirror of his own inner desires thing, it's like they _want_ him and Zach to be together in real life, like they'd support it and still come see all their movies-- hell, they seemed to have put up with _Blind Dating_ , for fuck's sake, these are some loyal-ass fans-- and, well, Chris wants to believe thinking might in fact make it so, because then he could be like Candide, except truly this time, living in the best of all possible worlds.  Because really, some of these fics capture the _ache_ that's taken up home in his chest-- they know it hurts more than any arthritic in the Antarctic.  And see, there, _this_ is why he's a douchebag and a white dwarf to Zach's dark supergiant.  Zach would _never_ pause and turn that phrase over again in his head, revelling in the clever click of the repeated hard consonants and all the variant "a" sounds.

So, because he's hating this junket more with each passing second and his words _can'tdon'twon't_ get through to Zach, who is so above things like Chris Pine pining for him-- since each day has the two of them saying big words in places so strange that it doesn't matter who's Murray and who's Johannsen because no matter which way you slice it, unspoken meaning isn't lost because Chris never lets it out to be found in the first place-- Chris writes.

Self-indulgent?  Definitely.  Pathetic?  Fuck, yeah.  But he's just put Zach to bed and repaired to his own, empty one, and Chris is California enough to admit he needs validation, even if it's from anonymous online women.

He starts typing, sometimes reciting the words like Brennan did in that rip of a closer, like saying them aloud might make them magically true instead of a mindfuck-- and boy, had it been funny the way the cast _all_ had opinions on Gordon-Gordon's "struggles with it daily, in fact," he and Zach both coming down on the side of the authoress.  At least when it came to the fiction they enjoyed, he and Zach agreed about who was in denial.  Here, it's the opposite.  Zach is the blithe pard-like spirit and Chris is the mopey fairy under a curse of a spell, not just Tatiana and Oberon but the whole cast of fucked up little elves.  No fucking thank you.

" _Ne plus_ meta," he says to himself as he types.  "Nothing more meta.  Chris is drowning in words these days, similies and metaphors, analogies and so many language-y symbols that half the time he can't see straight through his thoughts, the ones that dizzy him with their prosody.  There are mixed messages driving the mixed metaphors, sure, but in the end, the shapes underlying the words, the Platonic forms of their meanings, if you will-- they all are the same thing, the same truth-- the slash of Zach Quinto's eyebrows, the aquiline of his nose, the pointillist blur of his stubble seen up too close.  If Chris were Christ and Zach Lucifer, this time the devil would win and Chris would drown in his smile.  He already has, he's already dead-- he just looks like he's breathing.  In fact, his heart stopped a long time ago, and even then it never did that good a job.  It's just as well, he supposes.  Hollywood's full of blonde-ish zombies, and Chris always feels the need to belong somewhere, to someone.  At least Zombies aren't big on rejection."

Chris hits save and rereads the words under his breath, tasting the shape and hearing their song.  It's navel-gazing, emo rpf fanfiction, yeah, but that doesn't mean it can't have metre and rhythm.  Assured that it flows, he writes on.  
   


  


  


  



End file.
